Atmosfere gospel is the Gospel review by CFA Accademia Musicale dei Campi Flegrei which takes place on Friday 8 July at the Macellum Tempio di Serapide di Pozzuoli (via Serapide, 13) at 19.30 and Saturday 9 at the church of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo ( Salita degli Scalzi, 17) of Gaeta at 19.30.
Forty choristers from Eyael, a choir born from the merger of the Città di Pozzuoli choir and the Città di Gaeta choir, will give life to a concert in which the disruptive energy of the gospel will be the protagonist. The songs included in the lineup are: Amen, My lord kumbaja, How Lord Excellent, I won’t go back by William McDowell, Thank you Jesus, Ride on King Jesus, The Battle of Jericho, Adiemus.
«I am very happy – says Enrica Di Martino, artistic director of the show and president of the CFA – of this show because the protagonists are two choirs that for the first time will perform together. The strength of the Gospel lies precisely in its ability to unite people; the songs we offer underline the sense of brotherhood, of sharing typical of this music. As if by magic, as always happens in the Gospel, the many components come together in a single voice. Already in the experience of the International gospel days, where national and international choirs performed, I noticed how the peculiarities of the individuals blend with those of the other participants, giving life to a real artistic intertwining particularly pleasing to the public. Thanks to Ati Macellum, which manages the Macellum of Pozzuoli, we return to this fantastic place that provides a unique setting. In Gaeta, the church of Santa Maria di Portosalvo, an evocative location, will host us and give us the energy to make our music known ».
When the Blacks from the African continent, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were brought into slavery to work in the cotton plantations of the southern United States, their music accompanied them and to alleviate the fatigue of that life, the plantation songs were born from which the work songs and calls, songs that described their daily life in the fields and to communicate with each other.
The Baptist and Methodist preachers from Europe who converted them to Christianity found fertile ground in the strong spirituality of the blacks and in their music. Thus were born the Spirituals, a Christian reworking of African ritual music. With the end of slavery, 1865, there is a constant attempt to modernize the spirituals and thus favor their diffusion and commercialization, and a new musical genre is born whose rise was unstoppable, and soon, thanks also to the advent and to the diffusion of radios, turntables and tours, he crossed the American borders.
Gospel music is typically choral music. Since about 1960, successfully combining religious lyrics with contemporary rock rhythms and being accompanied by bass and drums, the Gospel choirs leave the churches meeting that success that is still deservedly recognized today.
The concert program is designed to enhance the sense of the gospel which is a music that tells the pain, difficulties and frustrations of everyday life, but also the faith and the hope of liberation and redemption. The two faces, pain and hope, always walk, just as they do today for us. From the pandemic, immense and excruciating pain, we are trying to get out, hopefully for a better world.
The concert on 8 July will be preceded by the presentation of the book Il viaggio di Apione by the architect Maria Caputi.
From the sands of the Fayyum oasis a team of archaeologists finds a casket with two papyri, two letters sent home by a young sailor. From here starts the journey of the young Apion, who moves from the coasts of Egypt to enlist in the Classis Praetoria Misenensis, the Roman imperial fleet stationed in Miseno, without imagining that, in addition to knowing a new land, new friends and perhaps even a great love, he will even be called to defend the life of the Emperor. Talk to the author
The event on 8 July is organized in collaboration with the Ati Macellum.
Entrance to the Macellum € 10.00
Admission to the concert on July 9 is free.